Work harder.

Depressing day. I had my tingli (listening) midterm and did okay. And by okay I mean not near my best at all, and I can only work harder from here. Read B-, my lowest grade since being in China (and kills my current A in the class). I have problems when listening tape recordings to hear the correct tones, but I just need to practice more and more with tape recordings. Normally I don't have a problem when listening to people talk in real life, but then I use their facial expressions and hand movements and context clues to understand what they are saying and figure what the meaning of the word is. I think tingli class frustrates me a little bit, because it seems the least useful to me in terms of being able to listen well to Chinese. A lot of the situations we talk about are things that wouldn't normally come up so it feels like I apply it the least in real life. However that is my fault and I will work harder to listen better.

Tomorrow is speaking (koyu) and comprehensive. I am pretty prepared for koyu (we were given the questions and the topics that we had to know about) and comprehensive is iffy at the moment because I need to review the earlier chapters vocabulary. I am going to continue to review and make sure I'm not mixing up characters, but I am pretty sure about the grammar.

One thing that I've noticed that is radically different in China from the United States is the attitude that students have. Students here generally work harder and blame themselves and not the teachers when they get a bad grade. When I teach my students will visually reprimand themselves when they get things wrong and almost shame themselves, whereas you would never really see that in America.

Aaand back off to study. Hope all is well.
xx,
Sarah